A while back, my wife was scheduled to hike up Badger Mountain, a local hill in the Tri-Cities, with a good friend.
On the day of the hike, my wife’s friend, who lives at the foothill of Badger Mountain, called Kathy and told her they might have to cancel the hike because the weather looked really bad.
Kathy, who lives a mile away from Badger, looked out her window and saw a dark storm cloud, but also saw a wide expanse of blue sky beyond it. She replied, “I think the weather is going to be very good. Let me send you a picture of what I see.” So Kathy snapped a picture from her point of view and sent it to her friend.
Her friend looks at Kathy’s picture with the blue sky and declares, “That’s not what I see. Let me send you a picture from here.” And she snapped a picture of a dark ominous looking thundercloud over her house.
They exchanged pictures and laughed, declaring, “Perspective is everything.”
As it turned out, that storm cloud did quickly pass and they enjoyed a beautiful hike up Badger Mountain.
There is a spiritual lesson in this story. We all face storm clouds that appear ominous and threatening when they’re hanging over our head, but if we can remember the grander view of that wide open blue sky that is always there and will be there long after that storm cloud passes, we won’t lose hope or give up. The storm clouds always pass. And the sky always remains.
God is this way. To material sense, evil often seems real like that thundercloud looked to my wife’s friend. But it’s always temporal. God is the permanent reality. As the storm cloud passes, so does the evil.
So, keep your eye on the grander view. Look beyond the storm cloud of the moment to the greater reality of God’s omnipresence. The storm cloud will leave, and the wide open blue sky of God’s omnipresence that was always there and will always be there, will be seen in all its radiant glory. It never left.
I was just listening to your talk on this as I was doing paperwork at work. I agree. Perspective is important. Whatever you see gets filtered through the perspective you hold in consciousness; the old story of wearing rose colored glasses and everything you see through the rose colored glasses will be rose colored. It was a great talk. glad to have some of it on paper.
Awesome! Thanks!
Will you post a link to the talk? I’d like to share it.
http://www.talksthatinspire.org/
This reminds me of a children’s book I read many (ha) years ago when I was child in Sunday school where a child was looking through windows of different colored glass at a white horse. The horse Appeared to be blue or yellow or whatever color the glass was, but the real horse had never changed colors ~ it was all in the perspective. I loved this children’s book. How many times we seem to have a distorted view of what reality Really is, from God’s viewpoint. Our skies are filled with beautiful blue where there may appear to be clouds of discouragement looming over us with ominous distortions that try to ruin our day, but only if we let them and don’t change our perspective. I don’t know if this link will work, but thought it was a good picture: http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=the+horse+of+many+colors+childrens+book&view=detailv2&&id=F0A3C8AE98A0C5E77250181CA8A6E07B4D357B44&selectedIndex=29&ccid=wzjLvEpb&simid=608023840536790036&thid=JN.aSc%2bYi%2ba6bKVmEOWAdRxKQ Thank you, Evan, for this wonderful reminder to keep our perspective focussed on the clear blue skies.
Our thoughts govern our perspective of what appears to be true or false. The human appears towards the false view which makes life so miserable. Isn’t it much easier to keep in thought the right perspective of life instead of it’s miserable opposite?
Thanks, Evan, for your clear way of showiing us how to take every day experiences and view them spiritually. So valuable.
I finally got round to watching Evan’s talk on one’s perspective yesterday and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Thank you Evan for sharing from your personal experiences yet again – they certainly help others in their spiritual growth!